1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of monitoring a device forming an information processing system, an information apparatus, and an information processing system. The present invention particularly relates to a technique for appropriately managing a monitoring target of a monitoring apparatus that monitors one or more devices forming an information processing system.
2. Related Art
As a method of monitoring a device in an information processing system, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open Publication No. 2008-33725 discloses the following monitoring technique. According to the technique, a monitoring apparatus accumulates: operational monitoring rules for analyzing operation information transmitted from monitoring target devices and then monitoring the states of the monitoring target devices; configuration information of each of the monitoring target devices; and setting knowledge that is information required to generate monitoring setting information for each type of determination condition included in the operational monitoring rules. When generating monitoring setting information for a specific monitoring target device specified by an administrator from among multiple monitoring target devices, the monitoring apparatus extracts, on the basis of the configuration information of the specific monitoring target device, an operational monitoring rule to be used for generating the monitoring setting information from the operational monitoring rules accumulated in an analysis setting accumulation unit. The monitoring apparatus then generates the monitoring setting information corresponding to the extracted operational monitoring rule on the basis of setting knowledge corresponding to a type of determination condition in the operational monitoring rule in the setting knowledge accumulated in a setting knowledge accumulation unit. The specific monitoring target device detects operation information of the device itself in accordance with the monitoring setting information generated by monitoring setting generation means and then transmits the operation information to the monitoring apparatus.
In a case where an operation state of each of devices forming an information processing apparatus is to be monitored by a monitoring apparatus communicatively coupled to the devices, the processing load of the monitoring apparatus increases if all of the devices are set as the monitoring targets. Accordingly, effective use of the monitoring apparatus is not necessarily accomplished in this case. Thus, it is necessary to set only a device that needs to be monitored as the monitoring target among the devices forming the information processing system, for example. In a case where only a specific device is set as the monitoring target as described above, what is required in view of security of the information processing system and the processing load of the monitoring apparatus is a system for appropriately managing monitoring targets of the monitoring apparatus. Specifically, in the system, when a priority of a device changes due to a change in a configuration or setting of the devices, the monitoring state of the device needs to be reviewed in order to surely set a device that needs to be monitored as a monitoring target and to remove a device that does not need to be monitored from the monitoring targets.